Arithmetic
by tiredgeek
Summary: A small village in the New Republic gets a warm welcoming from a very peculiar man who seems to have no recollection of where or when he came from.
1. Chapter 1

_I had no intentions of writing this as a fan-fiction, it just sort of turned into one. Excuse all the inaccuracies, I plan to clean that up when I've finished. Also, having not been too familiar with 's formatting I further apologize for all the unnecessary breaks.  
_

* * *

"Where'd this one come from?" Says Mr. Penndale.

The woman next to him shrugs indifferently coaxing a wallet out of the man's pocket, "Pity, not a single coin, suppose he's another one of Annie's drunkards?"

Mr. Penndale shakes his head.

* * *

"It is midday the man in our lawn was startled by the neighbor's dog." Myrtle giggles, tapping the tape recorder to her chin, "He has been wandering about ever since."

The man in the lawn poked his long nose around the corner of the rusty shed.

"Papa says he came down from a pool of stars, that he is alien," she shrugs, "maybe."

He stood baffled in the middle of a small cornfield. He wanted so badly to remember but what he did remember was pointless. He left through a large box… He remembered it being blue or maybe black… The year might have been 1540 or maybe it was the French Revolution… When was that, 1789? He wasn't so sure, he shook the dirt off his pants and coat lifting his head again to look at the small farm. It was unimpressive: three rows of blue corn and a small garden just behind it. If he stood on his tiptoes he could see over the stalks of corn, behind them sat a small village of tiny sheds and wooden houses and down by the road, an inn. As he turned to leave, a woman pushed open the screen door and stepped out carrying a bucket of water. She caught sight of him and exhaled, exacerbated, "Finally awake, son?"

He looked at her and at the bucket of water. He watched as she poured it in a small bowl and then over the flower beds finally turning around, "Well?" She said. He nodded, not knowing what to say and afraid the words would stumble off his lips. She nods back to him, pulling the leather wallet from her apron pocket and throwing it towards him, "Gave you a bit of coin, won't get you a fancy house in the town now, but you can rent a room at the inn just down the road for a nickel."

"Wh- Where would I find work?" He finally said. The thought had just occurred to him, there wasn't much in the wallet – he figured – to last a few days.

She smiled, "Now boy, from what I hear you fell from the sky, rest, get a few sarsaparillas and a pint at the bar. No need to go out looking for trouble in the city, there's plenty of work here, friendly work. It doesn't pay well, but it'll do. For now, don't worry your pretty lil' head, you've got plenty of coin in that wallet of yours to last the month."

She turned to leave, carrying the bucket on her hip, and pulling her skirts up over her calves, she looked over the side of the shed at Myrtle, his gaze following hers. Myrtle was busy picking up broken sarsaparilla bottles off the side of a small red school house just across the way. The woman continued through the threshold of the shed, cursing at her husband as she stepped in. The man went on looking at Myrtle and watching the sun bend along the school house. Off in the distance he saw the sky over the mountains merge in colors of red and green, and something occurred to him as he stood there in a stupor. The way it felt: heavy, weary, peculiar. He thought he knew where he was (or when he was rather), but it was only an assumption and he couldn't be so sure. He returned his attention to Myrtle who had recovered a gas mask from under a wooden bench. He hadn't thought too much about it, the object wasn't strange to him by any means in fact it was oddly familiar.


	2. Chapter 2

_I am sorry for the long wait, I hope this chapter puts to rest any questions brought up in Chapter one. _

* * *

Myrtle sat on the bench, preoccupied with the gas mask. She thought she might sell it, but it wasn't anything the dealer would be interested in, these things were everywhere. Myrtle dug her finger nails into the mud, slowly peeling it off the goggles and mouth piece, taking a second to look up at the man again. She documented that it had been nearly an hour and that lunch would be served shortly. Myrtle stuffed the gas mask in her duffle bag when she had finished and turned her head to the horizon. She couldn't see them, the fences, but she knew that they were there. Just a hundred feet down the road, outside the gates, was a small NCR station sitting empty for most of the time. She heaved a sigh and laid her elbows on her knees. This was no longer a town it had become a compound. The point was to keep the citizens safe from thugs and beasts. But the NCR troops have been struggling, falling dead in the wake of a battle with many creatures. She has seen them get pulled into the doctor's mansion by their hands, barely breathing and disoriented. Myrtle guessed that the NCR troops had relocated somewhere near the mountains to get rid of the infestation of geckos and coincidentally found themselves face to face with a few Deathclaws. Surprisingly enough, all ten troops recovered within the next month, chipper and ready to return to work.

Myrtle shook the thought from her head. She heard the sound of footsteps and looked up, staring at the face of the man in her lawn. She didn't have anything to say to him, but that was a lie, she had plenty of questions that lingered on the tip of her tongue, but she did not speak.

He stood near her, standing on his tiptoes and shading his eyes with the palm of his hand, "What's over there?" He asked.

"The fences," Myrtle replied, wondering if she should say any more.

The man nodded, "Fences?"

"Yep," was all Myrtle could muster.

Myrtle stared vacantly at her palms turning them in her lap, "I don't know where you came from mister," she began to say, "but here, our town is a bit unorthodox. Mama and Papa say the fences were built just a few months after they received me. They never told me why they were built, I know now ofcourse, that their there for my safety and the safety of others. Thank god for the NCR troops may the burn in hell."

The man chuckled kicking his feet about. He watched the dirt rise in plumes that twisted about his ankles and he heaved a sigh. Pulling out his wallet he says to the girl finally, "This here," he shows her the wallet, "Is it enough?"

She glances at him for a second, "Depends what you plan on using it for, you should be good for a couple of months if you stay, but, if you plan to leave, you might need to find work. The NCR troops who are hanging about just down the road, introduced the town to NCR paper money when they arrived. It's a big deal, especially when so many towns in the New Republic only accept bottle caps as currency."

The man stared at her.

"I'm guessing you're surprised, we get a lot of visitors from New Vegas with the same dumbfounded expressions, most of the time they're just drunk. That money is worthless, you can't do a damn thing with it outside those fences. And I'm guessing you'll want to leave."

He hesitated, "Yeah..."

There was a loud voice behind them, the woman had stepped out onto her front porch, yelling words to Myrtle that the man did not understand. Myrtle stood from the bench, "I don't know how much help I'll be to you," she says, "but I'm willing to take you to Goodsprings."


End file.
